A journey in words...

Welcome to my journey in words! A story about health, exercise, weight loss, food addiction, humor, size discrimination, sarcasm, social commentary and all the rest that’s rattling around inside my head...

I now twit, er... or tweet. Anyway, you can follow me on twitter @Aeon1202

It also doesn’t help that I’ve got anxiety largely related to my health.
Sometimes when my snow white skin goes instantly red during exertion (as is
normal for me) and I happen to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I can
start to worry that the drastic color of my face indicates a serious problem,
which causes my heart to speed more, which causes me to breathe too quickly,
which makes me light-headed. It’s a bad situation snowballing into a worse one.
I can even manage to get stressed out when I notice how slow my resting heart rate
is. It’s around 60-65 beats per minute, which would please any cardiologist,
yet I’ll sit there feeling my pulse and thinking, “it’s so slow… is it going to
just stop?!”

Last week I had such a difficult Zumba class that I did something I’ve
never done before: I briefly stopped and fled from the workout room. I knew
intellectually that I was having an anxiety attack. I’ve been doing hour long high-low
intensity workouts since last August and my cardiovascular fitness has improved
dramatically, so I knew it made no sense to suspect I was suddenly having a
heart attack – but my emotions refused to listen to reason.

On Thursday nights my class starts at 5:45PM and on a good day it takes
me an hour to drive home from work, so in order to get there on time I have to flee
the office at around 4:15, dash into the house, change clothes, and dash right
out again. If I get stuck in ANY traffic, I’m late. Last Thursday I was stuck
in traffic jam after traffic jam, came in late and missed the entire warm-up
song, jumping into a crowded class during either the second or third routine
when the intensity level was already rising. I was flustered from being in
traffic and late to begin with, plus I had no warm-up time. On top of that it
was warm and humid in the room, and I immediately started feeling overheated.

As is my custom I tried to push myself physically instead of listening
to my body’s warning signals; jumping when possible, trying to reach further,
and generally not pacing myself well. In a half hour I was shaky, my heart felt
like it was speeding, I couldn’t catch my breath, and I was red as a beet. Terrified
that I was about to collapse onto the floor, I fled for the bathroom to splash
cold water on my face and hide out in a stall until I felt semi normal again.

And in a few minutes I did. The anxiety attack passed and I was okay,
so I returned to class and finished. Afterward the combination of anxiety and
exertion left me weak and exhausted, so I nearly ran home and skipped my
weekly Yoga. The thing with anxiety though, is if you flee from a situation
where an attack occurred it can get harder and harder to go back again. I didn’t
want to set up a precedent where I associated the gym with being afraid, so I
made myself stay.

I’m glad I did. Walking back into class this week was still hard, because if something like that happens once I assume it will happen every time, but I
got over the hurdle and have had two perfectly normal classes so far this week.